MMWD’s Fisheries Stewardship is Swimming Along

I recently presented a report to the Watershed Committee on the district’s fisheries activities during 2012 and 2013. These activities include monitoring, habitat enhancement, and collaboration with the many agencies and organizations working on salmon restoration for Lagunitas Creek and other coastal watersheds.

Our monitoring is rigorous and we are now part of a state-wide effort for life-cycle monitoring, tracking salmon population trends in coastal streams throughout California. We conduct surveys during all the life stages of salmon while they are in Lagunitas Creek: juveniles (a.k.a. fry, young-of-the-year, parr or fingerlings); adult spawners; and smolts (the stage when they migrate to the ocean). There is positive news to report on the coho population in particular. At all three life stages, the coho in Lagunitas have shown an increase from the scary-low numbers of three and four years ago. The coho spawner run this past winter approached our long-term average of about 500 adults. This doesn’t mean that their recovery is complete, but it is a huge improvement over what had been characterized as an extinction vortex.

We have been successful at obtaining grants to help us implement habitat enhancement projects and assessments. We have implemented road drainage improvement projects, to reduce sediment from entering fish-bearing streams, and conducted assessments on all of the unpaved roads in the Lagunitas Creek watershed. Our current and very exciting approach to habitat enhancement is to improve habitat conditions during the winter to increase survival of coho and steelhead. This approach has the potential to increase the populations above the long-term average.

We are hardly working alone on these efforts. This work takes the support of the entire staff at MMWD and the Board of Directors. We also collaborate with a host of other agencies, organizations and individuals (including homeowners) who are equally as dedicated as MMWD, and we appreciate their participation. We all have more to do.

The long term average I referred to is the now 18-years of annual salmon spawner surveys conducted in the Lagunitas Creek watershed. Coho salmon were first listed, on the federal endangered species list, as threatened in 1996 and then reclassified as endangered in 2005. During the 2004/2005 spawning season, there were 496 coho redds observed, representing about 1,000 adults. During the 2005/2006 spawning season, there were 190 coho redds observed, representing about 400 adults. Our survey reports are available on MMWD’s web site, under the Lagunitas Fisheries Program page:http://marinwater.org/controller?action=menuclick&id=442